Deadline: No school of hard knocks for bikie with university degree

Luke Moloney, said to have quit the Hells Angels, has a leg up on other former one percenters seeking gainful employment with his college education.

Luke Moloney is in rarefied air among bikie bosses.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Straight H.A. student

Luke Moloney may hold a rare distinction among bikie bosses … an arts degree.

The County Court recently dealt with a nasty bashing that two of Moloney’s Hells Angels comrades apparently meted out to a gang associate for the sin of fraternising with a Mongols MC member.

In normal circumstances, the court’s plea hearing might be treated to a defendant’s sob story about being educated in the school of hard knocks.

Not Moloney. The court heard that the 42-year-old holds a bachelor of arts degree, which might give him an appreciation of finer things.

The Angel city chapter supremo has renounced his gang membership, according to Judge Richard Maidment.

“You have since renounced your club membership and you have disassociated yourself from members and supporters of that club,” Judge Maidment said of Moloney.

We will watch developments with interest.

Hells Angels Luke Moloney once ran the gang’s Melbourne chapter.

Sheep thieves pull the wool

They used to shoot stock thieves in the bush in the bad old days, and a lot of farmers still privately reckon that’s not a bad idea.

Soaring prices for cattle and sheep in recent good seasons has meant soaring thefts across the land.

Police revealed last week that 16 merino rams were stolen from a property near Lexton on the Sunraysia Highway between November 4 and 6.

That was nothing compared to the 585 young mixed-sex merinos snatched somewhere between July 23 and September 19.

Stealing so many fully-grown animals would have required a truck or multiple trips with a livestock trailer, police say.

Part of the difficulty of catching the thieves is the long period over which thefts might happen if stock are not checked and counted several times almost daily.

Farm theft can have the nasty knock-on effect of suspicion falling on neighbours.

For instance, the first Lexton theft could have happened any time in almost two months. With a lead time like that, the trail is mighty cold before the police get involved.

By then, of course, it’s highly likely the sheep would have been handed to a buyer earmarked by the thieves well before the offence was committed.

Insp. Paul Hargreaves of the Victoria Police farm crime co-ordination unit said the Lexton heist was unusual because it combined a big number of sheep with the targeted theft of valuable stud rams for breeding.

Unsaid, but obvious, is that successful thefts must often rely on inside information from local sources about the movements of farm owners. This has the nasty knock-on effect of suspicion falling on neighbours, tenants, fox shooters and rural workers such as shearers and fencers.

As Insp. Hargreaves said, “Farm crime strikes at the very heart of a farmer’s livelihood, resulting in hardships that extend far beyond monetary losses.”

Which is exactly why great grandpa used to shoot the thievin’ varmints. There are parts of Queensland and the Territory where that could still happen.

Legal eagles circle dying ponzi

It is now more than a month since alarms sounded over a Ponzi scheme exposed by the sudden death of former AFL figure and Ivanhoe lawyer John Bernard Adams.

The long list of disgruntled investors has quietened down a little, with many joining others to investigate legal options for clawing back money from Adams’ long-running mortgage loan caper, run as a side hustle from the offices of his law firm AMS since the 1980s.

There has been a resounding silence about the astonishing coincidence that one of Adams’ daughters wrote a play named Madoff the Musical while working overseas some 12 years ago.

Deadline would be surprised if Adams turns out to have been a career scammer for 40 years, despite the opportunistic streak which saw him use inside knowledge to register the name “Australian Football League” before the AFL existed, in order to sell it. Not to mention his willingness to sell out his own club, North Melbourne, to Carlton in a club merger deal.

AMS Lawyers office in Ivanhoe. Picture: David Crosling

Property and company records suggest that Adams and his wife (or companies they controlled) sold their spacious family home in Mont Victor Rd in Kew for more than $3m fairly recently before moving into what is arguably a more modest place just off Auburn Rd in Hawthorn.

If so, the cash margin between the two prices might well have been used in desperate, last-ditch attempts to fend off investors wanting their promised interest payments or, worse, their money back.

Lawyers for such investors will be studying the ownership not only of the new Hawthorn place, but of another house around the corner from Mont Victor Rd in Kew — and the family’s undoubtedly valuable beachfront compound at Big Hill near Lorne.

The same lawyers will have to get to the bottom of whether Adams family interests have any equity in interstate or overseas properties. Beaches and snowfields being the most likely targets.

Lawyers, bugs and money

It started off with echoes of the landmark Donoghue v Stevenson case of the snail in the bottle of ginger beer.

A Victorian man came forward last week to claim that a live cockroach had scurried from his stubbie of beer as he opened it, horrifying him and causing excitable media to froth at the mouth.

Then came the voice of reason, when Carlton United Breweries comms guru Reid Sexton told Deadline the company had taken the drinker’s concerns extremely seriously and instigated an investigation.

The conclusion was that the complainant was not a scammer but simply mistaken, in that the cockroach must have whipped into the stubbie soon after the top was removed, then decided to get out just as quickly when old mate went to take a big cold swig to quench a hard-earned thirst.

The brewer’s inquiry found his stubbie had been manufactured months back, meaning the insect could not have survived that long after heat treatment, given the lack of oxygen and the beer’s acidity levels.

He may not be an entomologist, but Mr Sexton lived in plenty of grubby share houses in his younger years. Picture: iStock

“It is a scientific impossibility. A cockroach cannot survive nearly three months” inside a sealed bottle of beer, said Mr Sexton. Who, while no entomologist, has a degree in common sense and street wisdom after years of living in grubby share houses in his younger years as a hard-hitting reporter here and in London.

Things have changed. These days, the well-groomed father and husband is an expert at taking the fizz out of a good yarn rather than doing beat ups, as they say in the trade.

So, it looks as if there will be no law-shaping Donoghue v Stevenson ramifications from this case.

Legal-minded readers will recall that in 1932 Scottish woman May Donoghue drank a ginger beer served in a cafe without knowing it contained a decomposed snail.

She subsequently fell ill and sued the manufacturer, a Mr Stevenson.

The House of Lords concluded that she was owed a duty of care and that this had been breached, resulting in one of the most far-reaching decisions in legal history.

Mr Whiffy’s soft serve insult

A former ice-cream industry figure has found himself in trouble lately for reasons best not discussed in detail.

It continues what has turned into a long run of negative interactions with the law.

One of them includes a claim that while once left alone in a police interview room, he adopted the faecal position and filled a bin with his own waste.

Allegations that he was assaulted by police closely followed this breach of workplace etiquette. The whole episode seems a bit whiffy.